Swapping in some gasoline takes away this lubrication, leading to damage. The video below from [Max Machinery] shows how they work. Hes making money selling gas at zero expense to himself.. The smart thieves are the ones that know how to avoid the guys with all the resources, he said. They do I fact blend at the pump but now its done by the computer base. Thats amazing, considering oil prices rose and peaked in 2008 before Obama was even president in 2009. So I can see that they had good reason for the law, even if the law didnt stop the behavior. If it wont mute I dont use that station again. yes this is whole grade madness in US where you have 5 different blend with only 1 grade difference between them. I used to work on a system that talked to gas pumps back in the late 90s. I dont think this blended thing has ever been an option in the U.K. We just got lead, no lead, or diesel. Thx. A spokesperson for Stewart said she is considering possible legislation once specific language is developed by the Office of Agriculture Law Enforcement, the office that regulates gas pumps in the state. But what about the automatic shut off? In Texas the 89 octane is blended 65% 87 octane and 35% 93 octane. The 3 way switch redirects where the electricity will travel to. Since the mass flow through the tube is constant, the velocity at the smallest part of the throat is highest, leading to the lowest static pressure at that point. A thief still needs to open up a gas pump panel to install a pulser manipulator, but many Gilbarco cabinets use a standardized key. They havent done that in decades the ECU handles that over a 3G network. John Clark, a police officer at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department North Division in North Carolina, said a suspect he arrested in March used a remote control to access a Wayne pump at a Charlotte gas station then sold the gas. Im a pump tech. Plus some have dispensers that inject cleaners into the fuel at the station. So I left a message with their contact to roll a tanker truck out, and left. They are substances with zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, substances which cannot resist any shear force applied to them.. Next time you are pumping gas, youll have something to think about. Kevin Collier is a reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy and technology policy for NBC News. For example, if one valve is at 100% the other is always at 0%. Ask Hackaday: What Was Your First Electronics Win? Next time try and comment on subjects you are actually educated in. The longest lasting design was a multiple piston arrangement with a swash plate. 100% gaurantee they will be blending at the dispenser. Also it ran on a 6809 back then and I loved getting paid to write 6809 assembly code!). One of these things is the lowly gas pump. The plant where I worked used these up until about 1990. The diaphragm also expands to slow down when you approach the point where the pump will shut off (for example, if you asked for $10 worth of gas). Another piece of the world puzzle falls into place. This happens because of a drop in lubrication. I usually got 640 km (400 miles) out of 50-52 litres (13.7 US gallon). Learn more, Three-Wheeled Turret Car Looks Like It Should Be Orbiting Thunderdome, Tech In Plain Sight: Primitive Engineering Materials, Tech In Plain Sight: Check Digits And Human Error, Tech Hidden In Plain Sight: Cruise Control, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_energy_crisis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama, https://patents.google.com/patent/US5222027A/en. The most common tactics arent technologically sophisticated, and some of the tools used to hack pumps are easily available online. I always was in the back of my mind to check up on how the nozzle works. The training consisted of reading a pamphlet that had all of the same warnings that were posted on the pumps. The first exploits the fact that many Wayne fuel dispensers have a remote control option to allow station owners and fuel inspectors to easily access them. Gasoline is difficult to meter accurately. For calibrating said pumps you just calibrate each grade 87 then 91 then you check 89 to make sure its within tolerance. This is two valves connected in such a way that when one is open, the other one is closed in proportion so that the total flow is always equal to 100%. When the rising level of fuel blocks the hole at the tip, it causes the suction to stop, the diaphragm collapses, and the fuel valve springs shut with a loud click. Respond faster in what way? On top of the safety features there is the payment side, which needs calibrated and fairly accurate measurement of volume and price calculation. I dont know whether they are still used in gas pumps. If you need help with the Public File, call 407-291-6000. As I was about to leave, people started saying that the gas had stopped pumping! So far more than 50 cases involving use of the device have been reviewed by state and federal investigators. The ethanol absorbs water, which is why the non-ethanol is sold a boat gas. While Waynes gas dispensers require remote users to enter a key code to access its controls, many station owners never change it from the default setting, Denton said. Separate mechanisms are in place for metering the gasoline level and for preventing the tank from being overfilled. However, there is usually no mid-grade gas. Thats why manufacturers dont recommend using ethanol blended fuels for older cars that are not designed with flexi-fuel capability in mind. Install and repair stations. There is one correction or clarification required however. Any slow response time would probably be due to waiting on hardware to reset, or talking to the credit card network. Dead Spider Becomes Robot Gripper: Its Necrobotics! Then the 95 octane unleaded eurosuper came and now this is in reality the normal gas, if you do not buy a special premium or racing or oherwise fance namend much mor expensive product with 99 or 100 octane. The whole 5 grades thing seems to be uniquely American, Ive only seen similar in Russia where the grades run from premium if youre very lucky, through regular (still quite decadent) down to has sticks floating in it 62-octane for the toothless old dude in the village to run his Soviet tractor on. As far as additive, I have as a driver had to manually add the BP additive when the injector at the rack was not operating. If unburned diesel fuel makes its way into the exhaust system, it will ignite in the catalytic convertor. Not forgetting the tech that reads your plate so various government agencies know where youve been. Sylvanus Bowser sold a pump as early as 1885 to sell kerosene that people used in lamps and stoves. J Reynoldson has updated the project titled Solar pool heater controller. I am a lead tech at a Petroleum Solutions company. The results could be very expensive! lion mclionhead has updated the project titled Shower curtain solutions. Richard C. Corson originally came up with a version of the automatic shutoff in 1939 and received a patent in 1942. From multi geared siphon turbines with Venturi and 3 way valves, all the way up to the tank monitoring system and point of sell unit and the network it connects to, you are completely out of your element, and should conserve you attentions to not falling asleep behind the wheel and putting your hose in the correct tank. We had a few stations that carried 89, but that was a less common grade in this area. We did have a temporary moratorium on this during the first corona virus outbreak, to minimize contact between customers and attendants, but now were back to no self-service. Products were always blended to their final form at either the pipeline terminal or the refinery while loading. Since when does a truck driver know the inner-workings of a gas pump? When you buy gas in bulk, the amount is usually compensated for temperature and some countries, like Canada, have done this at the retail level, too. Weights and measures fluids specialist for 35 years. If you are interested in the Venturi effect, you can make3D printed Venturi tubes. The Exxon truck and the Texaco truck get their gas at the same place that the Shell truck does. Gas pumps rely on a device called a pulser to measure how much gas comes out of a pump, telling it how much to charge a customer. Interesting! But then, even THOSE are four-way, since off is a brightness as well. All that does is make fuel expensive for everybody else, Patronis said, Not only would I support banning it (the device), but even if youre caught using it making sure there is a multiple degree felony attached to it.. Midgrade is most definitely blended at the dispenser. Least where I am all of them offer boat gas this is real gasoline(non-ethanol) you would have bought in the 90s or earlier before they stated blending in ethanol. It is believed they have keys that allow them to access the pumps or in some cases, they pry the pumps open. As little as 1% gasoline contamination will lower the diesel flash point by 18 degrees C. This means the diesel fuel will prematurely ignite in the diesel engine, which can lead to engine damage. And as the article suggest at mainly a 60/40 blend(even though the price per gallon is in 10 cent increments) And Im not talking about 20 year old pumps either. (Yeah, people do that, and theres an auto-disconnect fixture up there.). Such stores tend to have only a handful of employees working at a time, unlike major chains that can employ security staff and better surveillance equipment, Denton said. News 6 arranged a meeting with task force members and State Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, so that the veteran lawmaker could see firsthand how the device operates. As a delivery driver, you REALLY did not want to mix up tanks when delivering. Theres some way to tell how much is pumping and how much it costs and, today, some way to take the payment. And if you continue to use the fuel, you can cause real damage to the vehicles computer sensors by either overheating them or covering them in soot such that they cant detect anything. The big corporate gas guys, theyre arming up, Denton said. One guy says, all of the new ones are blenders. Simply speaking, gasoline is a solvent while diesel is an oil. I mean, literally, word for word. Ive been the parts and equipment buyer for over 20 yrs. But THEN, after you could no longer even FIND leaded gas, they never retired the law. But nice to see the basic principle of the shutoff explained, anyway. You have blend ratios you program into the dispenser upon start up. Copyright 2022 ClickOrlando.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. Just the handle alone has some 10 safety related features, from stopping the flow when you let it fall out of your hands, and a valve that prevents people from draining the whole hose while nobody is looking just to name a few. If you wanted, say, 5 gallons, the attendant would pump the gas from the underground tank into the big glass tank that had measurement marks on it. Gas has a thermal expansion coefficient at 20C of over 4 times that of water. Gasoline needs to have an octane rating of 87-91 to fit todays car engines. Experts say it probably costs $40 to $50 to make each device, which fits perfectly with the pulser. The pumps are located in the storage tank. So it BECAME a nanny state thing. Thanks for the memories. According to wikipedia Fluids are a phase of matter and include liquids, gases and plasmas. Didnt know this was a thing. You are also completly wrong about the Fuel products arent considered contaminated unless there is 10% or more of a different grade in the tank. statement. In 2004, automakers were concerned that some gas didnt have enough detergents to prevent carbon buildup effectively. You left out the most sophisticated part of the system the mechanical analog computer that used to be driven by that flow meter, to keep a running total of both the flow and the price. Diesel fuel has an octane rating of 25-40. (This was one of three jobs Ive had where WalMart was a customer!). This is accomplished with a blend valve. This is going to cut your power and performance considerably. Only a couple of stations are even left with mid grade straight product and are quickly being retro fitted to allow for an e-85/ bio-diesel #2 split tanks. Too bad my memory is 20 years old (I left a job in 2000 programming a controller that talked to pumps), but I remember that blender pumps were a thing back in the late 90s. Always a good plan. Today they call white gas camp stove fuel. An article that has no hidden agenda or desire to influence the publics political leaning. The video below from [BrainStuff] shows a good diagram. Beyond these, youll get incomplete combustion, initially characterized by large amounts of black smoke. The Venturi effect causes a pressure drop when you compress a moving fluid. Obviously, this is a simple arrangement but ripe for improvement. I think that ended with the introduction of 91 octane regular, 98 octane was still leaded for cars that needed it. If a new station is built. Investigators tell News 6 the manipulation device was first uncovered in Orlando and Tampa last June and many lawmakers are not aware of it. As the name implies, there must be a pump. I think the blending they were referring to was to create mid grade gasoline as 89 octane is not available at the loading rack. Like you pointed out, most trailers have multiple compartments, with the bigger ones usually having 5-6 compartments of differing sizes capable of holding up to a total of 11,000 gallons or so. The most common tactics arent technologically sophisticated. IE 11 is not supported. Which would require that ethanol be a fire retardant, since they usually add no more than 10% ethanol into the mix. I just went 8 months between fillups. If enough diesel fuel gets in the cylinder, you can hydro-lock the cylinders, resulting in a blown head gasket, cracked cylinder head or other serious problems that can lead your vehicle down the road to a quick and final death. ORLANDO, Fla. A handmade device powered by two 9-volt batteries is being inserted into diesel fuel pumps by organized gangs across Florida, allowing them to pay 5 cents a gallon for the high-priced fuel, according to members of the Orlando Cyber-Fraud Task Force. A 74-year-old's lottery winnings were withheld when the DEO said he was overpaid for unemployment benefits. I admit that I have only delivered in the upper Midwest parts of the country, but Ive worked with guys that did delivery in Arizona, California and several other states in the southwest, and they said operations were essentially the same there. But there are some things so commonplace that even the most tech-savvy of us dont bother thinking about. Yes, well, Ive heard reports that adding ethanol to gasoline reduces your mileage by up to 20%. Lets pay homage to those silent safety features and explore the tricks of the gasoline trade. If it goes tick, tick, tick, its probably a bowser style meter. And although you clearly know at what flow rate a fuel delivery truck gets filled at, you are hardly qualified to discuss how these actually work. Thieves use homemade devices, which can be made from a handful of parts from a hardware store, to slow the pulser so it registers only a fraction of the gas it dispenses. I managed a gas station from around 1992 thru 2007, in the beginning there were 3 gasoline tanks, reg, mid or plus and prem, the mid or plus was blended in the tank at usually 60% prem and 40% reg. Increased gas prices lead to more reports of gas theft in U.S. They had a hand-cranked pump inside the store for this, that worked like the Bowser pump it pumped kerosene into a glass bowl, and that would then drain into my 5-gallon can. And to be clear, this was 1980, not 1940. It has been at $8.25. Thats what makes one gas of the same octane rating different from the other brands. Another thing is where they retrofit older pumps with touchscreens, but dont quite update the user interface, which means some of the selections you do have to be done by pressing the screen, and others from the buttons by the PIN pad, like selecting the number of the pump you want to use, and they dont tell you whether to press the number on the pad or on the screen, so people just stand there scratching their heads wondering why nothing is happening. I worked for a company that specialized in fuel delivery in the Midwest that delivered products to various customers, such as gas stations, mining operations and airports. Mid grade is 90 percent of the time blended in the dispenser. could usefully use the higher octane rating to run more efficiently (thats the selling point of the high-grade fuels sold in the UK/EU) thus saving the extra cost. While gas thieves often sell to regular people at a discount, they tend to steal more from independently owned stores. John Tolley, a trial lawyer who founded JT Law Firm, gave Florida homeowners tips for how they can get ready for hurricane season. We had a pump that the customer could dial in the octane they wanted, and the price was automatically adjusted. Simple Propulsion For The Lazy Paddle Boarder, R2Home Is Ready To Bring Back Your High Altitude Payload. Hate to contradict you, but in fact almost all multi product dispensers MPD that have more than two grades are actually blending the product. https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/bvMAAOSwVBRb3Iww/s-l300.jpg. This allows the exact mix of two fuels into an intermediate grade. Oddly, the gas pump predates the automobile. J Reynoldson has updated details to Solar pool heater controller. That sounded like a common sense explanation of how a venturi works. I thought by add ons, you meant additives to the fuel, not the pumps. Best of my knowledge all aircraft have them, not just old ones. I would have to disagree with your comment on blending I install blenging dispensers weekly so I know for sure that we make the mid grade on site more often than not. Take diesel for example, it has way higher density than gasoline, but only around 25 octane rating. But it was only after Hurricane Katrina, where a drastic price increase led to more thefts, that most American stations began requiring customers to prepay for gas. If its in you are golden and the dispenser is doing the blending. So, if you are filling up a gallon can with 91/93 octane fuel, you are likely not getting more then a 1/2 a gallon of 91/93 octane. Lots of safety features at the pumpscrash valves at ground level that snap shut to prevent flow should a collision occur, Intrinsically Safe electronic controls that prevent sparks (prevent igniting vapors), etc.